Did the slap heard round world hurt or help the true winners of the Oscars?
The slap heard round the world will have stole some of the real buzz from last night’s star studded event with CODA winning Best Picture. CODA which stands for Child of Deaf Adult was also my pick for best picture. I have a good friend who is deaf but fits into the hearing world without anyone noticing, and so many of the issues expressed in the film are some I’ve heard from her and others I the deaf community. But most of all it deserves Best Picture not just for the message but for all the reasons we love films — good script, an incredibly expressive cast (no spoilers if you haven’t seen it but there is a scene of casual sex education that you don’t need to know sign language to understand), and the diversity the #sowhitesocars so badly needs right now.
But before that happened, another minority was singled out — and not for the color of her skin but for a medical condition. Chris Rock made an arbitrary reference to Jada Pinket Smith’s hair style not once but twice in regards to the 1997 movie GI Jane. In GI Jane, Demi Moore receives a shaved cut head as a choice her character makes. Jada Pinkett Smith on the the other hand has shared publicly her battle with an autoimmune disease that causes hair loss called alopecia.
As peer reviewed on WebMD,
Alopecia aerate is an autoimmune disorder that causes your hair to come out, often in clumps the size and shape of a quarter. The amount of hair loss is different in everyone. Some people lose it only in a few spots. Others lose a lot. Sometimes, hair grows back but falls out again later. In others, hair grows back for good. When you have an autoimmune disease, your immune system attacks your body. With alopecia areata, it’s the hair follicles that are attacked. Doctor’s don’t know why it happens. But think people who get it have something in their genes that makes it more likely. Then something happens to trigger the hair loss.
Jada Pinkett Smith has described her personal condition as “terrifying” in 2018 which is completely understandable for any untreatable medical condition. If she had been a cancer survivor, it probably would have been a clear boundary not to be questioned into satire and the initial ‘canned laughter’ wouldn’t have occurred the first time he mentioned it. I personally was shocked when Chris Rock attempted to have the joke land a second time.
There are obviously opinions in how it was handled with questions around Will Smith’s initial laughter but it’s easy to understand when you have a comedian on stage, cameras can pick you out of the crowd at any point in time, you’re conditioned to keep the laughs going…until it gets personal. I do not condone Will Smith’s use of violence to get his point across but a part of me did jump for joy that someone of importance stood up for a minority in the moment and not in a post-social media slaughter. It was a powerful moment that the two ASL translators needed no interpretation for.
For the first time, the Academy included 2 ASL translators and tablets at seats for assistance. We can focus on how long it took for this to happen in the Academy’s history to make a more inclusive awards show for some of the 15% of the world’s population with a disability or we can revel in this moment that the beginning of real change for those who need it most has now arrived.
Lauren Anders Brown is a documentary director who recently curated an exhibit with the United Nations with persons with disabilities and is writing a follow up book to the exhibit WANTED: A World For One Billion.
